Mick Jagger Talks James Brown on the Set of Biopic 'Get On Up'

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"It's a really hard role to do," Jagger says, an hour later, during a break in filming. "It would've been safer to take someone from Broadway who had a lot of dancing and singing background. Chad would be the first to tell you, he wasn't a dancer. But after he'd worked for six weeks on it, he immeasurably had become the character."

Jagger would know. Although, he says he and Brown weren't close friends when the soul legend was alive (Brown died in 2006), he spent plenty of time with him in backstage dressing rooms and concert halls, studying and absorbing his stage demeanor, his dynamic with his band and, of course, his dance moves. "The way he interacted with the audience, the timing, I was taking it all in and trying to understand the whole picture of it," Jagger says.